Reflections on COMMON POWERUp 2025
COMMON POWERUp 2025 at Disneyland in Anaheim, California which I attended last week was for me the most inspiring POWERUp since before the pandemic.
Coincidentally, the last POWERUp before the pandemic was also held at Disneyland in 2019. (Isn't that ... um ... goofy?!)
- POWERUp 2020 was cancelled.
- By late summer of 2021 we were vaccinated, so a mixed live/virtual POWERUp was held in Columbus, Ohio in the fall with 90 in-person attendees including myself and around 810 virtual attendees.
- The technical content was excellent but the mood was funereal.
- POWERUp 2022 was held in New Orleans as we began to recover, but numbers were still lower than in bygone days.
- When I search my memory about POWERUp 2022, mostly I come up with
- the Champions restaurant visit under the aegis of @Libby Ingrassia
- eating beignets with @Birgitta Hauser
- and someone waking me at 5:00 AM by trying to break into my hotel room.
- POWERUp 2023 in Denver and POWERUp 2024 in Forth Worth were more encouraging, but attendance was still somewhat light, while the community awaited various developments from IBM that had not yet fully matured.
POWERUp 2025 was noticeably different from its immediate predecessors.
The mood this time was upbeat, despite the passing last autumn of the well-loved fixture of COMMON, Fred Pritchard (this latter event creating moments of solemnity and reminiscence).
Let's start with a shout out to COMMON staff and volunteers:
Staff:
COMMON – Manzoor, Wynn, LeAnn, Maggie, Peter, and Ian.
AV Team – Davar, Mohammed, Armond, Chris, and Abe.
Photos – Darin
Volunteers:
Registration Desk – Don, Doug, Steven, Hoss, and Erik
General – Matthew, Mika
TLCs – Carlos, Susan, Dan, and two students – En Duo and Benjamin.
They did a world-class job and everything ran smoothly.
The POWERUp 2025 tech content was stunning and novel.
A lot happened in the past year in IBM i.
-
- IBM talked about AI at Forth Worth, but now we are seeing delivery:
- New features and enhancements to
- Navigator
- Db2 SQL services
- More innovation in Code for i
- Migrate While Active
- etc. to the max
Additionally, there is great ferment in the community, especially in the arenas of
- Adoption of Large Language Models (LLMs)
- Integrations with other entities in the enterprise arena
- Increasing movement towards cloud-hosted IBM i
I delivered 5 sessions
We were all gratified by the relatively large number of young people mingling with the crowd.
In addition to attendance by new recruits to the platform, COMMON's enlightened leadership finally took the plunge of inviting students to attend the conference free of charge, a step many of us have advocated for years. The intensity and intellect of the students from Biola University and Chapman University that attended were awe-inspiring. I spent several hours among them sharing with them and learning from them.
I experienced an unexpectedly emotional moment.
Tim Rowe was leading a "Hidden Gems" session with young IBMers Liam Allan, Ann Wilkerson, Sanjula Ganepola, and Jonathan Zak. As the session ended, I rose to say, "I believe I speak for the whole room that we are impressed by the quality of this new generation of IBMers and gratified that the initiative led by senior staff including Steve Will, Tim Rowe, Scott Forstie, Jessie Gorzinski, and others to recruit this new generation has succeeded. We thank these young people for delivering innovation at the rapid pace required for the survival of our favored platform." The 70 or so attending the session seconded and confirmed my remarks with enthusiastic applause.
Disneyland remains an interesting and, in some respects, a challenging venue for COMMON.
The numerous and ubiquitous resort and conference center staff ... excuse me, they're known as "Cast Members" ... were cheerful and helpful and seem to love their jobs. One begins to ponder the exact composition of Tinker Bell's fairy dust :) The food in restaurants within the resort precincts ranged from "okay" to "excellent" and was always expensive. However, the little children are funny and happy and exhibited an exceptional lack of the whining and crying that one usually expects where large numbers of parents converge with their tots in tow. I'm an old cynic who finds Walt Disney's heritage a mixed bag, but children still love hugging Mickey Mouse.
In any case, as Ed Moon and I waited for our ride share, the doorman asked if I had enjoyed my stay.
"Certainly," I said. "You cast members are wonderful, and we had a fine conference. But I think that if I hear the hotel sound system playing "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo" one more time, I'll lose my mind."
"That's why I'm out here," answered the doorman. "I never go inside!"